Inevitably So
by Glisseo
Summary: One night could change everything when Quidditch star Harry Potter asks plain, unpopular Hermione Granger to the Yule Ball ...


Hermione Granger is not popular. She is not pretty, with her large front teeth and her bushy hair and her plain colouring; she is too bookish, too quiet when jokes are being told, too loud when opinions are expressed. She is the girl who reminds the more forgetful teachers that homework was set.

Nobody is more surprised than she when, in fourth year, when the Triwizard Tournament is all anyone can talk about, Harry Potter asks her to the Yule Ball. It isn't even supposed to be for those under seventeen, according to the history books, but there were so many complaints and with Professor Dumbledore in such a good mood around Christmas … but Hermione was not, in any case, expecting to be asked.

And then one day in the common room, Harry Potter walks up to her, and she automatically places a hand over her completed Transfiguration essay, assuming that he'll just want to copy her, but then he says, "Hermione, will you go to the ball with me?", and there are audible gasps from around the room, and a voice that sounds remarkably like hers says "yes, all right."

She isn't stupid. She's far from stupid, actually, and she's fairly certain that Harry pities her, and that perhaps he wants to make up for some of the harsher remarks made by his best friend, Ron, which are ironically by far some of the _nicer _things she's ever had said to her.  
But her mind often wanders, and she entertains the possibility that Harry is tired of the vapid giggles that come with some of the other girls in the year, that he wants a partner with whom he can have a real conversation, not one who will hero worship him for who he is: Harry Potter, the Quidditch star, with the famous parents and the famously large fortune.

The evening of the Yule Ball comes with no clue to which it might be, but Hermione finds that she doesn't really care, as she is swept away by the perfumed clouds of laughter and chatter that fill her dormitory. She is one of the girls tonight, with her carefully chosen dress robes, far more beautiful than anything she has ever worn before, and the wonderful, _magical _potion that allows her to pin her once bushy hair into an elegant knot, so that she can look in the mirror and smile, and for once, not wince at the sight of her teeth, because she looks good and she knows it.

Harry is handsome in bottle green, and as she comes down the stairs he flashes her an easy smile smoothed from the look of surprise that flitted across his features at first sight of her.  
"You look really nice," he says, and Hermione knows she will never be able to hear that enough.

The ball is grand and glamorous and slips away in a swirl of music, dancing, sparkling lights and sparkling smiles; the hours while away as quickly as those spent curled up with a heavy book, and Hermione recognises that strange sensation of enjoying herself. Harry is funny, sarcastically so, and dances with an awkwardness that belies his grace in the sky; and she is at her best, witty and smiling and captivating. She feels admiring eyes on her more than once, and feels as if she could be Fleur Delacour, the Beauxbatons champion who has captured Hermione's envy since she arrived. She even dances with other boys, Neville and Seamus and Dean and even Ron, who makes her snort Butterbeer up her nose with a comment about Professor Snape's so-called dress robes.

And then the night ends, and as Harry and Hermione walk back up to Gryffindor Tower, the latter is dizzy with astonishment at herself. Here she is, with Harry Potter, having had a marvellous night … she starts to draft a letter to her parents in her head, and then remembers that this will mean nothing to them. They would be excited, perhaps, at the possibility of a love interest … but this isn't. Her heart doesn't race when Harry spins her around the dance floor, her hands don't tremble when they near his. And in the way that he smiles at her as he bids her goodnight, she can tell that he feels the same way, and she is relieved, and still euphoric, because she thinks and hopes that when the magic of tonight ends, she might have gained a friend.

She is, as usual, right.

* * *

_AU, if that wasn't obvious. This was going to be something else but ran away with itself, so will more than likely be a two-shot, possibly more ..._


End file.
